Roadmap: what we’ve done so far and what is next

Roadmap: what we’ve done so far and what is next

In only two years we’ve done so much and still, we have a lot of goals ahead of us to be accomplished. With our soft cap reached, it’s time to take a look back and discuss plans for the future. In order to do so, our roadmap will guide us through this journey.

Our milestones

Q3 2016 – Q4 2016: Initial Conception
A lot of new exchanges were popping up in the crypto space. In this evolving market, advanced analysis algorithms were not developed. In the beginning, single pairs on exchanges were monitored, spreads were analyzed and execution times were measured. This was done manually by inserting the relevant values into spreadsheets. The procedure lasted a long time and it was not clear if all trades could have been
executed in an appropriate time. Furthermore, enough funds were needed for exchanges and KYC procedures consumed additional time. After extensive research of “old economy” solutions and consultations from financial experts the project started with the goal to develop an automated arbitrage trading system.

Q1 2017: First Algorithm
The first step to creating an automated arbitrage system was to develop and refine a specialized algorithm in order to find profitable arbitrage opportunities, based on the data obtained from three main exchanges: GDAX, Kraken, and Bitfinex. In this
phase, the relevant parameters and theoretical mathematical formulas were defined. Furthermore, backtests were performed in order to validate the results.

Q2 2017: First Private Investors
After intensive testing of the algorithm further resources were needed to develop the product. Private investors contributed with USD 900,000 in order to hire additional software developers, information technology specialists and stock experts for algorithm, software and infrastructure development.

Q2 2017 – Q3 2017: Algorithm Improvement
The algorithm was further improved and aligned to the constantly changing market parameters in order to be as profitable as possible in all market conditions (bullish, bearish, sideways). This led to deeper analysis of asset pairs, market depth and the volatilities of these pairs under certain market conditions. As arbitrage trading is a race among other traders to outweigh inefficiencies of market prices, Arbitao put the focus on transaction times to ensure that arbitrage opportunities can be utilized before they
disappear.

Q2 2017 – Q4 2017: Arbitrage Software for Closed Group
In order to use our algorithms properly, we developed a software. This advanced piece of code calculates the profitability of trades, delegates the outcome to the internal protocol and then to nodes which are executing orders on exchanges. All APIs from major exchanges where integrated and the data was normalized and standardized to enable automated data collection from exchanges. Afterward, the automated execution of orders was implemented to ensure fast transactions. The software additionally takes the following parameters into account: spreads, fees, and volume. This is to conduct proper profitability analysis and assure reliable arbitrage opportunity signals. By the end of 2017, we had a prototype with a minimal user interface that served as a minimal viable product for beta tests. This product was already used by a closed group of private investors and successfully generated profits.

Q4 2017: Arbitrage Interface Implementation and Closed Beta
The interface was designed to enable easy access to the service for individuals, where relevant data is displayed and users are able to get a general overview of the arbitrage opportunities, investments, duration, returns, and profits. A closed beta phase was started and a diverse crowd of testers was invited. Quick feedback and rapid development cycles allowed us to make fast progress in UI development and drastically improved the user experience.

Q3 2017 – Q2 2018: Network Infrastructure
One of the main focuses of the Arbitao Team is the network infrastructure which can be defined as a competitive advantage compared to other projects. The design of the infrastructure is conceptualized to gather data from exchanges, transfer them to a normalized standard, calculate arbitrage opportunities and execute them in the shortest time. This can be guaranteed as the servers and data centers are located next to certain exchanges and are having, therefore, the least latency. These nodes are sending the information to the internal communication protocol, which is acting as a decentralized decision-making entity where the data is analyzed and sent back to the nodes in order to execute the trade.

Q2 2017 – Q4 2018: Blockchain Integration
Our blockchain technology is based on NavCoin. We forked the code and started our own testnet in Spring of 2017 under the name ATAO. Experiments with sidechains have shown that they are not useful to ATAO’s use case, which is to provide access to Arbitao’s arbitrage trading platform.

Q3 2018: ICO and Launch of Platform
We started our ICO on 15 July 2018 and successfully reached the soft cap of USD 28,000,000 by the first week of September. We gave early investors access to the automated trading platform in order to benefit immediately from the already existing services.

Our plans

Q3 2018: TAOx – Internal Exchange
Although the Arbitao Team is already in negotiations with major exchanges in order to get listed, we want to guarantee our community the easiest possible way to exchange the ATAO Coin from the platform. Therefore, we are developing a highly secure exchange with very low fees for the community. This helps the project to be independent of other external parties, which will help to accelerate the growth of our business. The released will be soon, on October 2018, just as planned.

Q4 2018: Simultaneous Long-Short Strategy
Next, to the development of the internal exchange, the Arbitao Team is aligning the already existing algorithm to a new strategy where various parameters are needed to get a signal for the parallel execution of a long and short trade on different exchanges. This unique strategy was developed by monitoring the impact of arbitrage bots on certain exchanges. Through this data, it is possible to define certain scenarios in which the price will stabilize itself. In this scenario, we are executing simultaneously a short and a long trade on different exchanges and benefit of the price adjustment which are defined by lower price spreads. This is also used in futures trading.

Q4 2018 – Q4 2019: Arbitrage Chain Trading via Cloud Computing
Additionally, to arbitrage pair trading and simultaneous long-short strategy, we are also developing an arbitrage chain trading system. This means that asset pairs are traded in a chain in order to benefit from arbitrage e.g. BTC (Bitfinex) -> ETH (Bitfinex) -> ETH (Binance) -> EOS (Binance) -> BTC (Binance). For this system, additional computing power is needed to calculate the most profitable chains as the solution room surges by adding more variables to the objective functions, which increases the complexity of the system but offers a broader range of arbitrage potentials. Therefore, the Arbitao Team is working on a cloud computing feature which is integrated into the ATAOwallet. This functionality enables the community to offer computing performance which will solve the defined solution room of possible arbitrage chains in an appropriate time. Furthermore, the participants will be rewarded with ATAO Coins.

Q3 2019 – Q4 2020: Fully Decentralized Arbitrage Trading
The main goal of Arbitao is to use the ATAO Blockchain in order to execute trades in a decentralized way. This will be integrated into the ATAOwallet, where every node can set up their API connection to predefined accounts. Verified community members will have the possibility to execute trades. Moreover, Arbitao will offer the feature that community members can program their own algorithms and use the Arbitao infrastructure. All nodes with a fast internet connection and low latency times will be rewarded for executing the arbitrage trades, as this will add a high value to the network.

NOTE: New date for the ATAOwallet launch

We rescheluded the launch of ATAOwallet, originally planned for September 2018. The development of wallets for each operating system (Linux, Mac, Windows) – all under the ATAOwallet umbrella brand name – has started in Winter 2017, and is still ongoing, because very advanced features – like cloud computing support – are being implemented for the future and tested thoroughly. While doing so, our team faced unforeseen challenges that involved complex problem solving in order to make our wallet extra secure and functional. With that in mind, we decided to make it publicly available with a one month delay, so it will be released as perfect as we planned. We are putting all of our efforts into it so you can enjoy this product soon.

Reaching our soft cap was just the first of many milestones to come in the following months. You can make them come true as soon as possible by joining our ICO while it’s live.